


When Fractured Stars Align

by Laguera25



Series: What Dreams May Come [1]
Category: Almost Human
Genre: Disability, F/M, Physical Disability, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-14 20:10:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2201472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laguera25/pseuds/Laguera25
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been two years since anyone has touched John with anything but clinical detachment.  Two lonely, miserable years.  He has a friend, someone who doesn't see him as a headcase or an object of pity.  Someone who might give him the intimacy he so desperately needs, but if he's wrong, he could lose the one bright spot in a life gone dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Fractured Stars Align

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for Lilithknox, who wanted John to get some much-needed love. Yes, the Rhea mentioned herein is the same one from "Door Prizes for the Battered and Broken." There might be other works in this 'verse, more snapshots from the road John couldn't take then. We'll see.

He stands in front of the door with his fingers curled around a bag of takeout from her favorite Chinese place. His mouth is dry, and his heart is a hot, aching stone inside his chest. His own apartment is behind him, and part of him thinks it would be better to turn tail and flee to its sanctuary of guitars he never plays anymore and empty spaces where Anna's things had once been, but this apartment and its occupant are more of a home than it ever was, and he can't shake the feeling that if he doesn't do this, it'll vanish, too, gone as Anna and her spun-sugar promises of happily ever after. 

It's not a loss he can stand, so he shifts and sidles and presses his thumb to the biolock. The door opens with a click, and he steps inside to be greeted by the smell of homemade soup simmering on the stove. Simple chicken by the smell of it, and his stomach rumbles in anticipation. He can already taste it on his tongue, warm and savory as he sips it from a mug in the precinct while going over his mountain of unfinished case reports.

 _That assumes there'll be a tomorrow,_ whispers a cynical voice inside his head. _This goes bad, and it'll be just another wistful memory that aches and burns in your gut like an ulcer._

His grip tightens around the handles of the plastic bag. "Rhea?" he calls.

The click of canine claws on smooth hardwood and the jingle of dog tags, and her German Shepherd appears, tongue lolling and tail wagging. 

"Hey, Linc," he says as the dog makes a beeline for the bag. "Ah ah," he chides as it snuffles eagerly into the plastic. "Not for you." Linc raises his head and cocks it to the side, and his tail slows.

"Not for you," he repeats. "The last time you got into the spring rolls, you had gas for three days."

Linc cocks his head in the opposite direction as though contemplating his words, and when John spares him nothing but an idle scratch behind the ears, he huffs and skulks the way he'd come.

"Hey."

Rhea sits by the stove, head bent over the steaming pot. She looks up at the sound of his voice, and for a moment, his heart flutters, because she's so damn beautiful and she's smiling at him, white teeth and small, pink lips and a dimple in the corner of her mouth.

 _Maybe I won't have to,_ he thinks. _Maybe the storm has blown over, whatever it is._

Then the smile fades, and his heart drops into his stomach. He holds up the bag. "I brought home dinner." He rattles it to emphasize his point.

She replaces the lid on the pot, releases her brakes, and rolls to his side. "Bless you, Kennex. I'm starving." She snakes an arm around him and gives him a gentle squeeze, but before he can savor the contact, she pulls away and takes the bag. "Ooh, Chow's. You're an angel of mercy. Grab some plates?"

He watches her rummage through the contents of the bag, and his fingers itch with the urge to stroke her soft, golden hair. She used to let him, when the nightmares were bad, their diseased, wrenching claws sunk so deeply into his mind that he could only shiver and hitch and seek the warmth of her bed and the comfort of her touch. She'd thrown back the covers and invited him in and cradled him while he'd trembled and flinched and blinked against the memory of flying grit and the thunder of a pulse grenade in his ear. She'd crooned and murmured gentle nonsense, and somehow her whispers had been louder than the grinding roar of collapsing masonry and the wet, cartilaginous splinter of tendon and bone as his leg had been severed in a flash of white-hot agony.

 _Sssh, ssssh, it's all right,_ she'd murmured as he'd shuddered and panted in her embrace, eyes turned inward to a nightmare only he could see. _It's all right, John. You're here with me, and everything is fine._ Fingers in his hair and kisses at his temple, heedless of the sour sweat that beaded there. Soft and patient as he'd wrestled with his demons, and as the paralyzing terror had begun to relinquish its hold and leave him spent and shamed, she'd let him turn into her and card his fingers through her hair until the smothering phantoms of his past dissipated like mist at dawn.

She'd cocooned him through the worst of his panic attacks, huddled with him on her bathroom floor while he hyperventilated and rocked back and forth with his knees tucked to his chest and his hands balled into trembling, bloodless fists, or sat in her chair while he vomited into her toilet and coiled a sweaty hand around her bony ankle to tether himself to the present. And on the rare occasion that his stomach outpaced his feet on the race to the toilet, she'd patted his back and chivvied him to the safety of the couch and mopped up his bile, twisted haphazardly and often painfully over the sides of her chair.

 _Maybe that's why she's withdrawn,_ sneers a malicious voice inside his head, and in his mind's eye, he sees Anna hovering over his shoulder, beautiful and terrible and cruel as she whispers in his ear, sultry and cloying as incense and smoke. _Maybe she got tired of dealing with a weak manchild who's afraid of the dark, got tired of cradling a ruined body and soothing a fractured mind, of beating back monsters and cleaning up puke and washing the sour stink of fear out of your clothes._

_You're so needy, John, so pathetically desperate. That's why it was so easy to use you, fool you into thinking I loved you. Big, bad John Kennex has always wanted the wife and the kids and the white picket fence. All I had to do was flash you a smile and blow you a kiss and fill your head with visions of wedding lace and baby strollers, and you swallowed any lie I fed you and ignored every instinct in your head. You knew it was too good to be true, knew I was out of your league, but you wanted that happily ever after so badly, so you closed your eyes to all the warning signs and let eleven men die to preserve your precious little daydream._

_Maybe she senses your weakness just like I did and is repulsed by it. She has no need for it, no greater cause to serve. But for all her genius, she's rather simple-hearted and can't bring herself to tell you the truth, so she does a slow fade and hopes you'll take the hint. But like I said, John, you're needy, so you stick around in spite of her increasing distance and tell yourself you can fix it if you just try hard enough._

_Poor John,_ she croons, and her fingers caress his cheek. _I wonder what you'll lose this time._

 _That's bullshit,_ he protests as Rhea peruses the half a dozen takeout cartons in the bag. _Rhea's not like you. She's not a psychotic, heartless bitch._

Besides, Rhea hasn't withdrawn from him, not exactly. She still greets him with a smile and a hug when he comes off shift and ruffles his hair over dinner at the small kitchen table. She still sets out a thermos full of his favorite coffee every morning before she leaves for work and cooks a pot of soup once a week so that his stomach knows more than the scorched scald of coffee and the stale sweetness of old doughnuts and Chinese food grabbed from the small window of a food truck on the way to a crime scene. She still invites him to watch movies on the couch. She's still Rhea.

 _And yet she's not,_ his father says. _She's so remote now, an island in the mist. Her fingers used to linger in your hair, to toy with it while you stuffed yourself with the good Italian bread she brings home from the bakery twice a week. Now they barely skim the tips, a shadow passing over turbid water, and when you watched movies on her modest widescreen, she sat with her shoulder against yours in an amiable jostle and her head on your shoulder. Now she sits rigid as a tentpole on the far end of the couch and studies the screen like it's a goddamn test. No more jokes when the movie is bad, no more laughter at the corny jokes, no more brushes of her hand against yours in the popcorn bowl. Just awkward silence and all of her attention fixed on the flickering images on the screen._

_You've racked your brain trying to figure out what happened to sour the sweet friendship between you. You've analyzed every conversation, every quip and terrible joke to pass your lips over the past few months, looking for the thoughtless word or deed that made her retreat. Was it because you ragged on a book she liked as summer waned and slipped into fall? Was it because you had to cancel or reschedule three dinner invitations in a row because the Detweiler case went sideways and you spent the next two weeks glued to your desk or stuck in the car with Dorian while he sang Elton John's entire catalogue under his breath? Maybe she washed her hands of you because you promised to take her out for her birthday and left halfway through the appetizers to catch a domestic gone bad. It's hard holding up a friendship when you're doing it by yourself._

_I'm a cop. It's a hazard of the job,_ he protests, and turns to gather a pair of plates from the cupboards below and to the left of the sink.

 _Yeah, well, it used to be a whole lot less hazardous,_ his father points out. _There's been a marked uptick of late._

That, too, is a hazard of the job. People go crazy as the holidays draw near. Fuses get shorter and memories get longer, and old hurts resurface like last year's fruitcake. The neighbors who've been feuding over property lines for years escalate to fists and baseball bats and threats tinged with whiskey, and the wife who's been ignoring her husband's philandering snaps and plunges a boning knife into his chest while he sleeps off a four-martini lunch and dreams of the tits on his hot, young secretary. Children whose needs exceed their parents' means wind up in the ER with empty stomachs and swollen faces or dead in their beds while their Daddy's brains drip from the ceiling like rancid sugarplums. Maybe the halcyon Christmases of Norman Rockwell paintings still exist somewhere in the world, all tinsel and eggnog and love on the air like evergreen, but for him, they are long gone, smothered by years of unwrapping bodies like grisly, unwanted presents and listening to the shattered wails of children whose lives have been so cruelly and irrevocably bent by a single, terrible moment framed in the warm, merry glow of Christmas lights.

Besides, she had handled it perfectly well until recently. She'd never sulked when he canceled or rescheduled, never given him the silent treatment or the cold shoulder. She'd never complained when he'd come into her apartment in the middle of the night, drawn there by the need for companionship or the simple awareness of her presence as he bedded down in her guest room and listened to Linc snuffle through the long watches of the night. She'd just programmed his thumbprint into her biolock and taken to buying his favorite coffee and bottles of cheap olive oil for his leg. The shift in demeanor confuses and frightens him.

 _Poor little John,_ Anna jeers. _So lost without someone to love you. Have you ever considered that you're just not worth loving? You try so hard but fail so spectacularly. After all, you couldn't save your father. He died like a dog with two bullets in his back outside some crappy bodega, and all you could do was cry like a baby on the filthy bathroom floor of the M.E.'s office until Pelham gathered you up and told your mother because you couldn't. You couldn't save your mother when her mind deserted her. The best you could do was ship her off to some care facility where underpaid staff could keep her from scratching the walls and setting her room on fire because she forgot she left the hotplate on. She's still there, rotting in the stink of other people's shit, and you're such a coward that you make two duty visits a year. You couldn't save the men on your team because you were blinded by love, and then you escaped the consequences of your stupidity by being in a coma for seventeen months. You didn't have to see what you'd done, to face the widows and orphans of your men. And you couldn't save yourself, couldn't see what was right in front of you. So now you're short a leg and a handful of tortured memories, damaged goods that nobody wants, not even someone with her own set of scars._

 _Maybe she's figured out you've been jerking off in her shower,_ suggests a bleak voice inside his head as he collects two plates. _Maybe she heard you through the walls, or maybe you didn't rinse all the evidence off the walls. Maybe she went to take a shower after a long day on campus and stepped into a glob of your frustrated desire._

_And you do desire her, don't you, John? You have for months, ever since that grubby little psychopath strapped a bomb collar around your neck and left you to die on a bench while he filmed it for posterity and a flicker of Internet fame. It was her you went to when it was all over and the collar was in a plastic bag in the evidence locker. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn't scour the feel of that leather strap from your neck. It prickled and burned and squeezed like an invisible fist. Your heart wouldn't stop pounding even after two shots of Beam, so you crossed the hall in your bare feet and let yourself into her apartment._

_It was late, and she was long in bed. You stood in her darkened living room for a while and listened to the tranquil silence of her life, and then you slipped into her bathroom for another shower in the hopes that it would do what the one at the stationhouse couldn't and expunge the kiss of leather from the back of your neck. But it was tenacious and impervious to the vigorous application of soap and citrus body wash, so you toweled off and put on your boxer briefs, and then you padded to her room and stood in the doorway like the specter of the bogeyman._

_It was Linc who noticed you first. He raised his muzzle from his paws with the muted jingle of his tags and surveyed you in contemplative silence, ears cocked forward and tail thumping uncertainly on the hardwood. Then he rose and stretched and trotted over to sniff your crotch. You stood in the dark and scratched the top of his head, and then you crept inside and stood beside the bed. You longed to crawl in beside her and find solace in her warmth and the solidity of her small, spare body against yours, but you didn't want to wake her, and you were afraid it would be a presumption upon your friendship to ask such intimacy of her when you weren't wracked by terror of demons she couldn't see. So you sidled there, hands curled into fists, and wished you were braver, wished that your skin didn't prickle with the dry-mouthed desire--the bald, sickly_ need _to be touched._

_You don't know what woke her, but wake she did. She grunted into the pillow and stirred beneath the covers, and then she rolled onto her back and blinked at you._

John? _she slurred, and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand._

Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you. _It was true, too, but it was also true that you were selfishly glad you had._

You all right? _She groped for the touch lamp on her beside table, and a moment later, the area was cast in a dim, somnolent glow, candles flickering in the nave of a cathedral._

_The smell of leather in your nostrils and the weight of a timer against your Adam's apple. The paperclip in your fingers, fragile as glass as you blindly manipulated minute tumblers. That little bastard, Simon, hovering on the roof like a buzzard over its feebly-struggling kill and broadcasting your struggle for the world to see. He wanted you to die, wanted you to end in a shower of blood and gristle splattered over laptops and tablets and personal coms, and when you were nothing but a smear on the pavement for horrified onlookers to study like some perverse art installation, he would slip away, just like Anna did when she blew off your leg and stepped over your quivering body on her way to parts unknown._

_The thought of Anna made the bile rise in your throat._ I almost died today, _you wanted to say._ Another bomb almost finished what Anna started. _But the words wouldn't come, lodged in your throat like blood and shrapnel._

Bad day, _was all you could manage, and you swayed on your feet. Your stump throbbed beneath its cap, and your hands ached with the need to touch flesh not your own. But you couldn't ask, not when the department had deemed you fit for duty and there was no excuse to curl into her protective embrace like you'd done when you were broken and useless and trying to put all your pieces back together again._

 _She propped herself on her elbows and studied you in the dim light._ Oh, John, _she murmured, and then she dropped onto her back and threw back the covers._ C'mon.

_You climbed in, your prosthesis a wooden heaviness on the end of your thigh, and she turned into you and slipped her arms around you._

Shouldn't you take that off? _Her breath warm and soft against your throat, and it felt so good that you swallowed against a wave of helpless emotion._

Probably, _you admitted, and stroked her temple with reverent fingertips. Soft and warm as sun-kissed satin, and you longed to kiss it, to taste it, to feel it tremble beneath your tongue, but that was a presumption and an intimacy mere friendship could not abide, and so you settled for pressing a chaste kiss to her forehead._

Thank you, _you muttered into her hair, and went slack with gratitude as her hands stroked your hair. The only human hands to touch you since you emerged from your sojourn in the hinterlands of oblivion had been gloved and prodding and impersonal as a synthetic. Doctors and psychiatrists and the therapist at the rehab center. Maldonado touched you now and then--patted your shoulder after a rough shift or a job well done--but nothing so intimate as this, as the soothing glide of Rhea's hands over your arms, as the sussuration of her breath over your skin. Your chest cramped at the unthinking tenderness of it, and you turned your head into the pillow to stifle a moan._

Hey. Hey, _she crooned, and tightened her embrace._ You're shaking.

Bad day, _you repeated, because how could you tell her what you felt, what you needed? It would ruin everything, spoil this unexpected sweetness. She would turn from you, leave you to fumble through this inhospitable world with only the company of Dorian, who, bless his nanoneuro heart, still thought it a wonderland of possibility. He did not know, did not understand yet how hard and bitter it could be, and even if he learned and became a real boy, he could never give you what you needed, could never reach for you with desire in his eyes. If you confessed the truth, you would lose the only human connection you'd managed to forge from the dust and wrack of your obliterated life. She cared for you, but she was too smart, too driven to waste her time with a jaded cop with so many fractures grating beneath his skin._

_So you held your tongue and let the patient work of her hands slow your heart and bleed the tension from your bones as they had done so often in the early days of your acquaintance, when flashbacks and inexplicable terrors drove you from your apartment to crouch on her bedroom floor like a cornered animal. She drifted off long before you did, secure in the arms of a man she called friend, and as she slept the sleep of the innocent unknowing, you stared at the flutter of her eyelashes and the steady rise and fall of her chest and tried to ignore the needy, throbbing ache between your legs. It had been so long, and you wanted so much, but you did not dare, and when she awoke in the morning and disentangled herself from you to shuffle into the bathroom, she never suspected a thing. Nor were her suspicions aroused when you took her place in the shower fifteen minutes later, and when you appeared in her kitchen twenty minutes later, she had no idea that you'd sat on her shower benched and fucked your soap-slick fist until your come splattered against against the tiles. How could she know? After all, you were her trusted friend._

_But after that night, she was more than a friend to you. She was a hope. You relived her solicitous caresses and closed your eyes to sharpen the recollection of her breath on your sensitive skin. Alone in your apartment, you rutted into your lotion-slick fist and imagined it was Rhea and the tight, welcoming heat of her cunt. Shameful, perhaps, but less painful than fractured memories of Anna and the illusory love she'd offered with every surge of her hips and less humiliating than crafting fantasies from the faces of strangers you passed on the street. Sometimes, you masturbated in her shower, surrounded by steam and the faint scent of her warm, wet skin. It was heady and delirious and more than you could stand, and you hated yourself as you imagined her soft, pink lips around your pistoning cock, but your self-loathing was no match for your loneliness and primal, atavistic hunger, so you closed your eyes and spilled into your encircling fist and let yourself believe that this dream, at least, was more possible than the last._

_Maybe she's figured out you've been choking it in her shower and is disgusted,_ Anna needles, and smiles, vulpine and malevolent.

 _Fuck you,_ he snarls, but she only laughs, and he hates her for it.

Now that the possibility has presented itself, he can't push it from his mind, and he casts a surreptitious glance at Rhea, who is busily arranging cartons of fried rice and Mongolian beef and shrimp lo mein on the table. He's mortified to discover that he's half-hard, stirred by memories of his fantasies.

"You coming with those plates?" she calls, and drops a pair of chopsticks at his place at the table.

He clears his throat. "Yeah. You want me to do anything with the soup?"

"Just give it a stir on your way to the table?"

"Sure." He sets the pair of plates on the counter and picks up the long-handled, wooden spoon beside the pot. He lifts the lid and is hit by a waft of steam redolent with the aroma of chicken and cracked, black pepper and red peppers sweet and spicy. He slips the spoon into the broth and stirs. "Mmm," he says when the aroma intensifies. He peeks over his shoulder to be sure she isn't looking, and then he raises the spoon to his lips for a clandestine taste.

"John!" Scandalized. "Did you just lick my wooden spoon?"

"No," he lies, and licks the broth from his lips with satisfaction.

A sigh. "There's another wooden spoon in the drawer."

He sets the dirty one in the sink and retrieves a fresh one from the drawer, and then he covers the pot and carries the plates to the table.

"How was it?" she asks.

"How should I know?" he says innocently, and she snorts. "You want a fork?"

"Please."

He spins on his heel and tugs open the silverware drawer to collect the utensil in question. "You want a spoon, too?"

"I'm good."

He gathers a spoon just in case and checks the drawer closed with his hip, and then he returns to the table and plops into his chair. He sets the silverware near to her hand and reaches for a box of fried rice. His stomach rumbles as he pops it open, and he sighs in anticipation.

"Let me guess," she says as her hand snakes toward the box of shrimp lo mein. "You forgot to eat today." She grabs the box and drags it toward herself.

"I did not forget," he protests. "Trust me. If I'd had my way, I'd've eaten twice." He picks up a pair of chopsticks and plunges them into the mound of fragrant rice.

"But?" Rhea prompts. Her fork descends and appears a moment later with a fat, pink shrimp impaled on its tines.

"But Dorian. He gets so fixated on cases that he refuses to stop for anything."

She pauses with the shrimp poised before her lips. "Gee, I wonder where he gets that from," she says drily.

He scowls at her. "Smartass."

"Truth-teller," she counters with regal serenity, and pops the shrimp into her mouth.

 _Oh, yeah? Then how about you start telling me a few?_ he thinks morosely, but he only takes a prodigious bite of rice and says, "Besides, I do not obsess. Not like that," around the enormous mouthful.

"Nice," she says, and cocks an eyebrow at the tumorous bulge in his cheek.

"What? I'm starving. Just because he's a synthetic and doesn't need to eat, he thinks I don't need to, either."

She takes another bite of shrimp lo mein. "Aren't you the one driving?" she points out. "And save some for me, would you?"

He blushes and offers her the carton. "Yeah, but if I stop, he whines and starts singing Elton John tunes to make me eat faster."

She takes the proffered carton, picks up the spoon, and scoops two heaping spoonfuls onto her plate. "Poor baby," she clucks, and passes him the carton again.

He resumes his interrupted meal. "It's worse than it sounds," he insists. "Bastard does it on purpose."

"Of course he does." She pats his hand and gives it a gentle squeeze, and he's tempted to curl his fingers around hers, but before he can, she retreats and curls them around her fork again.

The ache of loss is so acute that he blinks. _What's wrong? Why don't you want to touch me anymore. The night I came over with the knowledge of Anna's betrayal lodged in my gut like a shiv, you sat on the couch and held my hand for hours. I still remember the steady, metronomic stroke of your thumb over the back of my hand while I slumped on the cushions and drank too much of your scotch and breathed through my nose to keep myself from screaming or puking or both. The solidity of your hand in mine was the only thing that kept me from collapsing into my own head and never coming out. You were good. You were safe and steady as a rock. You were my friend. So why can't you stand me now?_

"You all right?" Rhea lowers her fork and peers at him with concern, and Christ, she's beautiful, all golden hair and long, delicate lashes and dark blue eyes. He wants to kiss her, to lean forward and taste shrimp and soy from her lips and card his fingers through her hair, but she can't even abide the touch of his hand.

"I'm fine," he grunts. He sets down the box of fried rice and pushes it away.

She blinks in consternation. "You don't look fine," she says mildly. "Three bites ago, you were famished, and now you're finished? I know better, John. You're a bottomless pit. What gives?" She reaches for his cheek.

He recoils from the touch he so desperately craves. "I said I'm fine," he barks. It's much harsher than he intended, and he winces. "I'm fine," he repeats softly.

She raises her hand in wordless surrender and returns to her own meal.

 _Dammit._ "How was work?" he asks.

"The same. Bunch of bored, semi-competent students drowning out the ones with half a chance. Got a departmental meeting on Friday. Budget cuts or the proposed pay raise, I'm not sure which, but I'm not optimistic." Gaze fixed on her plate as she shovels in another forkful of rice. "You?"

He shrugs. "You heard the highlights."

"Right. Dorian the ruthless taskmaster."

_Time was, you would have told her about your day, just like she tells you about hers, with its lectures and office hours and annoying colleagues who drone on about pet theories and the grinding trench warfare of grant proposals. You would've told her about the drunk you hauled in who somehow managed to piss on your shoes from the back of the cruiser, or about the malfunctioning sexbot that ran down the street with pasties over her crotch, singing Vietnamese love songs to a group of touring nuns. You would've told her about the precinct preseason football pool and offered to cut her in._

_But then Anna happened, with her sweet nothings and pillow-talk treachery and cost the lives of eleven good men and your leg, and now you don't dare breathe a word of the life you live beyond these doors. She only knows about Dorian because he was with you when you found her at this very table, ravaged by fever and nausea and so weak she couldn't move. He was in the back seat while you bundled her in the passenger seat and drove her to the emergency room with your foot on the floor and your heart in your throat. He was there while you rocked back and forth in the chair in the waiting room, hands wedged between your knees and mind racing with myriad unpleasant possibilities. He was there, curious but mercifully silent, when she was discharged into your care later that night with a bag full of antivirals and stern admonitions to drink plenty of fluids. He was there right up until you ordered him back to Rudy's lab and shut her door in his face. Had she not been dimly aware of him through the haze of delirium and the furnace-heat of her fever, she would know nothing of him, either. He would be just another secret you keep within yourself._

_It's not fair, perhaps even selfish to do to someone who has opened her home and so much of her life to you, but it's the way it has to be. You know she would never hurt you, would never betray you and twist your words into weapons to be used against you and innocent people. She is everything Anna wasn't--honest and open and guilelessly affectionate. If she'd wanted to harm you, she could've done it a thousand times over while you were tucked into the fetal position on her bedroom floor, knees folded to your chest and face buried in your knees while you shivered in the throes of a nightmare from which you couldn't awaken and groped blindly for her hand. She could've laughed at you while you hyperventilated and keened in the back of your throat or taken a picture while you huddled there in your boxers or crammed yourself into her closet because it was safer and quieter in there, with no chance for someone to sneak up behind you while you ran for your life and fire an incendiary round into your leg. She could've snapped a photo and forwarded it to your superiors at the PP, and any chance at resuming your interrupted career would've died right there, but she just closed the accordion doors and let you be and sat nearby with a book until you could pick up your pieces and stitch them together again._

_She protects, not destroys. You_ know _this, know it in the marrow of your bones, and still you can't let her in. It's too dangerous. You trusted Anna and poured your heart and its attendant hopes and dreams into her ears and lips and between her parted thighs, and it got eleven good men slaughtered. Your misplaced trust left Pelham in pieces, reduced to gristle and ashes before he ever got to the cremationist, and left his boy an orphan who never celebrated his second birthday because he was too busy burying his father. Trust is still too dear, a cost you can't afford. It's lonely and bitter and cold, but at least no one else will die because you were wrong._

He casts a furtive, sidelong glance at Rhea, who slouches over her plate and chews in desultory silence.

_It's hard to hold on to a friendship when you're the only one holding it up._

He picks up his plate and pushes back from the table. "I'll clean up."

She looks up, mouthful of rice and noodles. "Okay," she says slowly after she swallows. She puts down her fork and reaches for a napkin. "John, what's wrong?" Her eyes are dark and watchful inside her face.

"Nothing," he grunts, and spins away from her. His heart is a cramped fist inside his constricted chest, and the taste of fried rice is dry and wooden inside his mouth. From beneath the fabric of his jeans comes the inflectionless voice of his prosthetic. _Synthetic integration failed_ , it announces, and the couplings disengage for the first time in months.

Robbed of stability, he pitches forward. The plate flies from his hands as he lunges for the counter, and rice flies through through the air and scatters over the floor in a mosaic of rice and vegetables. The plate shatters on the hardwood in a strident tinkle, and flecks of ceramic skitter across the floor like bone fragments.

 _Looks like the fragments sticking out of my stump,_ he thinks, and his gorge rises. His fingers snag the edge of the counter, and he stays his fall and pulls himself upright, disarticulated prosthesis lolling and bulging like a compound fracture beneath his pants.

From behind him comes the whetstone hiss of palm on handrim. "John?" Rhea says, and cool fingers graze his elbow.

"Don't!" he snaps, and shakes her off. "I said I'm fine."

Her hand retreats as though he burns, and her chair creaks as she settles against the seat. "You know what?" she says thickly. "You can go fuck yourself."

The hurt is so raw that he flinches at the ugly familiarity of it. "Rhea," he begins, stricken and ashamed, but she's already wheeling for the door, spine straight and face a careful, fragile blank of _I'm all right_ and _Nothing to see here._ She glides forward with a snap of her wrist, and then she disappears into the living room.

 _You're an asshole, John,_ he thinks as he shifts his weight to his good leg and fumbles with the couplings. The leg wobbles and yaws, held upright only by dint of his pant leg.

 _Damn leg fell off the night I met her,_ he recalls as he shimmies and rises on his toes in an effort to coax it back into place.

_Then I guess it's fitting that this is the way it ends._

The thought inspires a leaden dread in the pit of his stomach, and he swears under his breath and pogoes on his leg until the stubborn couplings relent and slide home. There's a subdued rustling from behind him, and he thinks it's Rhea, come to talk it out, but when he turns with an apology on his lips, it's only the dog, which wags its tail and makes a clittering beeline for the unexpected windfall on the kitchen floor.

"Great," he mutters, and runs his fingers through his hair as he surveys the mess. Linc offers him a chummy grin and lowers his head to gobble a clump of rice. He sighs. "Bon apetit, buddy," he mutters dispiritedly, and goes in search of a broom and dustpan. 

Twenty minutes and one immensely-satisfied dog later, and the kitchen is clean and the soup has been stowed in Thermoses inside the refrigerator. If he's lucky, he'll get to take one to the stationhouse tomorrow. If he's not, then at least Rhea's lunches for the week will be prepared and within easy reach. One last act of kindness from a disgraced friend.

He shuffles into the living room to find Rhea seated in front of her writing desk. She's still and round-shouldered, elbows tented over her tablet and head cradled in her hands. It's the language of exhaustion and defeat, and his body aches in sympathy.

"Rhea," he says softly, and crosses the room to rest his hands on her shoulders. She whimpers at his touch and erupts into a helpless, clonic spasm that rattles her from shoulders to knees. She rises from the seat, feet trembling with the involuntary movement, and collapses again. "Jesus." Tension simmers beneath his hands.

"You're not the only one who has shit days, John." It's almost a moan, and she scrubs at her eyes with the heels of her palms.

"I know." He brushes the hair from her shoulders and begins to knead. "I'm sorry."

She moans and trembles again, this time with relief, and the sound stirs his restless cock, which twitches and stiffens inside his pants.

 _Easy,_ he tells himself, and he's acutely aware of her delicate flesh under his hands. So fragile and delicate. He could bruise her if he weren't careful. His lips tingle with the impulse to kiss the crown of her head, and the tip of his tongue darts out to smother the sensation. _Any chance of that died when you put on your asshole exhibition in there._

Rhea sighs and lets her head loll against his belly. "I know you are," she murmurs, and offers him a listless smile. "And I'm sorry for telling you to go fuck yourself."

"Been doing a lot of that the last couple of years," he grumbles.

She huffs in amusement. "TMI. But if it makes you feel any better, I'll extend an invitation to join the club." She grips her handrims and gently nudges him with her pushandles to signal a desire to move, and when he drops his hands from her shoulders and retreats a few paces, she pulls back from the desk and turns her chair parallel to the desk.

"I cleaned up the kitchen," he says, and closes the distance between them again. "Well, me and Lincoln."

"Oh, God," she groans. "You know people food gives him nuclear-grade gas."

"It's not like I could pry rice from his jaws," he protests.

"Mmm. I'm betting you didn't try very hard." She presses her cheek to his belly.

 _Please, God, don't let her notice my hardon,_ he prays. He shifts from one foot to the other and cards his fingers through the silky hair behind her ear. "Hey, I was busy trying to put my leg back on."

The weight against his belly shifts as she lowers her gaze to his leg. "Get it fixed?" Solicitous fingers skim his leg where flesh meets carbon.

"Yeah. Just lost integration for a minute."

"Been a while since that happened. Something on your mind?"

"I could ask you the same thing."

She raises her head from the soporific cushion of his belly, brows knitted in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"C'mon, Rhea, you know what I mean."

"No, I don't." She straightens and leans back in her chair.

He scoffs. "Please. You've been acting weird for months."

"What are you talking about?" 

"Don't act like you don't know." Irritation burns in his gut like an incipient ulcer. "You've been avoiding me for months.

"Avoiding you?" she parrots, and he smothers the urge to shake her. "You've been here almost every day."

"Yeah, but you're not," he counters.

"John, I've been right-"

"You know exactly what I mean," he snaps. It's too hard, an interrogation when he only intended a discussion, but his skin burns with the memory of her touch, and Christ, he hurts for the want of her, for the chance to be seen as something other than a charity project. He can sense the truth behind her uncharacteristic caginess, and so he barrels on, a hound on the scent of his quarry. "Yeah, you roll through the door and go through the motions, but your mind is a million miles away. Hell, half the time I don't think you even know what I'm saying."

"John I-"

He cuts her off, determined to have his say. "Do you even want me here anymore?"

She gapes, bewildered at his outburst. "Of course I do. Why would you even-?"

"Think I didn't?" he finishes for her. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe because lately, it seems like you can't stand to be around me."

"Now you're being ridiculous," she retorts, and indignation flashes in her eyes. Her fingers tighten around the armrest of her chair. She draws herself up, shoulders back and chin outthrust in unconscious, mulish defiance.

His mind admires her even as his mouth grinds on. "So I'm imagining that you hardly want to talk to me anymore?"

She snorts. "You're the one who won't talk about anything deeper than your high-school glory days or the ballgame you watched last night."

He flinches, stung. "And you know why. Sorry if I'm not willing to give up another limb to meet your lofty standards of friendship."

It's her turn to flinch. "John," she squeaks in a small, brittle voice. "How could you even say that to me?" Do you really think I'd hurt you that way, that I'd-?" Her chest hitches, and she turns to stare at the bookcase that bookends the television mounted on the wall. "If that's what you think I am, then you need to go." Her chest hitches again, and she wraps her arms around herself, elbows cupped in trembling palms.

"What else am I supposed to think? Tell me. I come over for a dinner you invited me to, and you hardly say two words. We watch a movie, and you sit on the far side of the couch like you think I'm going to grope you. Sometimes you beg off before the movie's finished and hide in your room. What is it? What the hell did I do that's got you giving me the stinkeye? Did something happen? Did I have a panic attack or some fugue and hurt you?"

"What? No. Jesus, John, you'd never hurt me, no matter how fucked up you were. You wouldn't hurt anyone."

"Then what?" Beseeching now. "Did I say something to piss you off?"

She shakes her head. "You didn't do anything. Things have just been crazy, that's all."

"Bullshit," he spits, and she shrinks in her seat. 

"It's not bullshit. It's the truth," she says fervently, but her gaze shifts to a spot just over his left shoulder.

"You're lying," he says flatly.

"Why would I lie to you?"

"I don't know, Rhea, but don't fucking insult my intelligence. For God's sake. I've been a cop long enough to know when someone's full of shit."

"You've also been through a huge trauma," she points out in the low, soothing voice of all the doctors and headshrinkers who have been sticking their fingers into his ragged, suppurating wounds for the past two years, and he snaps.

"DON'T!" he roars. "Don't you do that to me. Not you. Anna did that to me whenever I started to wonder about all the snooping she was doing. Told me I was imagining things or working too hard and being paranoid. Smoothed it all over with a kiss and a flutter of her eyelashes. I believed her, and it got eleven good men killed and gave an army of fucking shrinks to root around in my head and poke those wounds no matter how much it hurt. And do you know what they told me?" A bark of bitter, mirthless laughter. "That I'd been through a huge trauma, and that I was imagining things and paranoid. You were the first person I met since I woke up who never said that to me, who never tried to make me feel broken and fucking crazy. So please, _please_ , don't start now. Please." His voice cracks and wavers.

"You know what? I'm going to go." He scrubs his face with his palm and steps around her.

An indrawn breath. A dry, rattling sob. "John." Little more than a whisper. "John, wait."

He keeps walking. The last time he let himself be moved by pleas and sweet nothings, he got his squad killed and orphaned his best friend's boy.

"John! John, stop!" She darts ahead of him and plants herself in his path, and as he swerves around her, she grasps his hand. "You're right, okay? You're right. I have been acting weird and avoiding you, but it's not for the reason you think. I'm not trying to hurt you. Christ, John, I love you. I just-"

He freezes. "You what?" he croaks.

She presses her forehead to the back of his hand. "I love you," she repeats, glottal and thin. "I have for a while. It's why I've been so weird. I'm your friend; I'm not supposed to want-" Her mouth works. "-what I want."

He takes three sidling steps to the front of her chair and drops to his knees. "Rhea, look at me." When she raises her eyes to meet his, he reaches out to wipe the tears from her cheeks. "What do you want?"

She shakes her head. "No. Uh uh. I'm not what you want, what you need."

"And how do you know what I want?"

She manages a watery snort. "Please. I'm the one people need until what they want comes along."

"And why wouldn't I want you?" he demands.

Another honking, indelicate snort. "Because you're beautiful." Her hand drifts up to hover in front of his cheeks. Her fingers thrum with suppressed desire, strands of spidersilk plucked by a skittering insectile leg. "You're so damn beautiful, and I'm-" She shrugs and turns her head so that he cannot see the shame that simmers beneath his fingers.

 _Oh. Oh, God._ He reaches up and tangles his fingers with hers, and then he presses her hand to his cheek. "Beautiful," he finishes for her. "You're beautiful." He turns his head and presses a kiss to the center of her palm.

She utters a drunken, broken titter. "I've been called a lot of things, but never that."

"Well, you have now." He nips the sensitive flesh of her palm and revels in her startled shudder.

She peers at him from behind the fall of her hair. "You're serious," she says incredulously.

"You have no idea," he growls, and skims his lips over the heel of her palm to mouth the pulsepoint at her wrist.

"God." It's a brittle croak, and she pushes off on her footplates, squirming. "John, can I- I want-" She licks her lips, and a deep blush blossoms in her cheek.

He settles on his heels, raises an eyebrow, and waits.

She huffs in embarrassment. "I want to kiss you."

He cups her face in his hands and surges forward to press his lips to hers. He should be gentler, he knows, more careful, but it's been so long, and she tastes so sweet. She squeaks in surprise, and her hands scrabble at her shoulders as he breathes against her mouth and flicks the tip of his tongue against her lips. A breath and then another, warm and plosive across the bridge of his nose, and then she opens to him with a sigh and slips her arms around his neck.

"Touch me," he breathes into her mouth. "I don't care where. Just touch me. Please."

She purrs and obliges. Fingertips skim over the sharp, high ridges of his cheekbones and ghost over his earlobes, and he moans softly and presses himself into her hands. _Please, Rhea,_ he thinks as she whimpers at the slither of his tongue over hers. Cool palms on the sides of his neck, and the balls of her thumbs draw along the points of his jaw.

She breaks the kiss with a gasp and nips his bottom lip. He grins and chases her for another desperate, sloppy kiss, and he braces himself on the armrests of her chair as he scrapes his teeth along her jawline and dips his head to mouth and the hollow of her throat. She clings to him in a heaving, uncoordinated sprawl, and needy, helpless whines slip from her slack lips.

"John." It's a ragged, wanton moan pulled from the pit of her stomach that goes straight to his cock, and he frots mindlessly against her legs. His fingers curl and itch with the need to tear and strip and claim.

"I want to see you," he pleads, and sucks the flesh of her throat between his teeth.

She stiffens, and her ragged breathing stills. "Are you sure?" she asks. It's so timid that he pulls back.

"Yes. God, Rhea, you're beautiful."

Her eyes roll in their sockets, and she swallows with a convulsive bob of her throat. "I'm not what you're used to," she warns. "I'm not like Stahl."

 _Oh, sweetheart._ He shuffles forward on his knees and cradles her face in his hands. "To hell with Stahl. If I wanted her, I wouldn't be here trying to get you naked."

She splutters at that, and her momentary amusement loosens a cold, hard knot of apprehension inside his chest.

She caresses his cheek. "I want you, sweetheart," she murmurs. "I have for a long time. But what if I can't? What if it's not good for you?"

That brings him up short. He's never considered the possibility that she'd never been with anyone. _You don't have the right to take that, John,_ his conscience whispers. _Not when you're going to fuck this up and leave her with nothing but regret._

"Are you saying you've never been with anyone?" he ventures.

"No, no." She flushes scarlet. "It's just been a long time for me, and I figure you're used to flexible partners who could take up parkour in the afterglow." Her hand stills, and she worries her lower lip with her teeth. "Would it bother you if I hadn't?"

"Been with anyone?" He shakes his head. "I just wanted to know if I needed to go easy. I don't want to hurt you." He strokes the slender stem of her neck.

"John Kennex, that is the last thing I'm worried about. If this were my first time, I can't think of anyone I'd trust more." 

He smiles and mouths her from the tip of her chin to her breastbone. "Nothing you could do would ever disappoint me," he murmurs against her sternum. Desire is a hot, roiling weight in his belly, and he glides flattened palms over her shoulders and down her spindly forearms. "Let me see you," he entreats, and takes both her hands in his.

She studies him for a long moment, eyes wide and dark with lust and uncertainty. Rosy cheeks and kiss-plumped lips and hair like spun gold over her shoulder. "All right, sweetheart," she says softly, and the endearment washes over him like honeyed oil.

He scoops her from her chair and rises to his feet in a single, fluid motion, and then he carries her toward the bedroom. He shoulders open the door and kicks it closed behind him.

"Hey, some of us have to live here," she chides, but the rebuke is undermined by the eager nuzzle of her lips in the crook of his neck.

The atavistic caveman hunkered at the base of his brain years to dispense with the niceties and tear off her clothes and bury himself to the hilt inside her slick, clutching heat, but he's keenly aware of her fragility as she nestles in his arms, and his heart remembers the kindness of hers as she'd stroked his face and rocked him through panic attacks that left him weak and helpless and nauseated, and left water on the bathroom counter while he'd vomited his dinner and clots of bilious memory into her spotless toilet. He needs her, but he'll be damned if he'll use her, a sexbot to be enjoyed and discarded, She's strong and fierce and beautiful, and she deserves to know it.

He carries her to the bed and settles her against the pillows with persnickety care, and her arms tighten around his neck and pull him down. He collapses on top of her with an undignified grunt. "I was going to set the mood first," he grumbles, but then her lips are on on his, hot and insistent, and he no longer cares.

Fingers in his hair and fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, and she pants into his mouth. "Help me," she pleads. "My fingers aren't used to tiny buttons." She gives his shirt a petulant tug.

He laughs despite his arousal. "All you had to do was ask," he murmurs, and mouths lazily at her neck until she whines and arches. He disentangles himself from the warmth of her body and the greedy tangle of her arms and stands to shed his shirt. It falls to the floor like sloughed skin, and he kicks it aside. "Pants, too?" he asks, and sidles to and fro.

She nods. "Much fun as I would have wrangling with your belt and buttons, I don't think I have that kind of patience." A faint blush creeps into her cheeks as her gaze roams his bare chest. It fixes on the smooth, pink scar over his left shoulder, a gaudy souvenir from his greatest failure, but then it slides to the broad, toned plane of his chest and descends to the taut firmness of his belly, and the unapologetic desire in her eyes makes him feverish and light-headed.

"You're incredible," she breathes, and reaches out to smooth her fingers over his chest. His skin ripples at the contact, and a helpless whimper escapes him. It's been so long since anyone has touched him this way, as though he were sacred and precious and priceless and not a collection of wounds to be prodded and categorized and dispassionately analyzed. His throat constricts, and his eyes burn.

"Rhea." He fumbles with his belt with numb fingers, and it takes him two tries to unfasten the button and yank down his zipper. She watches him all the while through half-lidded eyes, and her fingertips burn like a banked ember against the flesh of his right pectoral. He reaches for the waistband of his boxer-briefs.

"Wait. Leave those for me." Her gaze drops to the outline of his cock as it strains against the confining fabric, and damn if she doesn't purr.

 _Jesus,_ he thinks as he shoves his pants past his knees. _Jesus, Jesus, Jesus._ It's dusk deepening to full dark outside, but he can still see her in the fading light, see the rapid rise and fall of her chest and the golden corona of her hair against the pillows.

"It might've been easier if you'd taken your boots off first," she drawls as he yanks his recalcitrant pant leg over the heel of his boot.

"Yeah, well, those weren't exactly the logistics I was worried about at the time," he admits as he steps out of his pants and turns his attention to the other leg. "Besides, you were as eager as I was."

"I still am." Her avid gaze curls languid, velvet fingers around his cock, and he bites back a groan as it twitches and pulses.

His fingers graze hard carbon fiber, and he freezes. "Uh," he says with his customary eloquence. "My leg."

She raises her head from the pillow, brow furrowed. "What about it? You hurting?"

"No. No, I just..." He trails off, unsure of how to explain the sudden shame and doubt that has overtaken him while his cock throbs between his thighs and a willing woman lies before him in invitation.

 _I just don't want wear it while I'm with you,_ he thinks as she lies atop the bedsheets and surveys him from beneath long, golden lashes. _You're beautiful and soft and utterly human, flesh over muscle and bone. I'm afraid that if I leave it on, it'll graze your calf or your hip or your thigh, hard and priapic as my thrusting cock but so inhuman, cold and lifeless as corpse flesh, and the hunger in your eyes will gutter and die, or worse yet, curdle into pity._

"Do you want me to leave it on?" he asks at last.

"It's up to you, sweetheart. It's not like I haven't seen you without it before. You're gorgeous either way, and besides, it's not your leg or lack thereof that currently has my full attention." She licks her lips and lets her hand slide over the prominent bulge in his boxers.

Even with the flimsy barrier of fabric between them, it's almost too much, and his knees threaten to buckle. He keens and gropes for the coupling on the side of his prosthesis, and when it releases with a shrill, admonitory beep, he rises on the toes of his good leg and lets it fall away with a ponderous, echoing crack.

"You better not've scarred my floor," she warns, but she opens her arms.

He hops forward and falls into her waiting embrace, and his lips find hers with bruising force. Her lips open as willingly as her arms, and he groans as her tongue slides into his mouth in a lazy, possessive flicker that tightens his belly and ignites a languid heat at the base of his spine. He cups her face in his hands and draws her thumbs over her cheekbones and nips at her lower lip until she gasps. His cock lies flush against her belly, and he can't resist the need to cant his hips and induce a frisson of sweet friction.

The pleasure is intense and immediate, and he buries his head in the crook of her neck in a bid to ground himself. _Do that again, and this'll be over before it starts._

Her hand cradles his burning nape. "It's all right," she whispers. "We've got all night, and I know it's been a long time for you."

"I want it to be good for you," he pants, and struggles not to rut against her supple stomach.

She scores her nails down his nape and along the bony ridge of his spine. "Anything we do is going to be just fine," she promises, and sucks his earlobe between her lips.

"I want to see you."

"So see me," she answers, and her roving hands come to rest on the swell of his ass.

He props himself on his elbows and dips his head to kiss and mouth her throat. She tilts her head to grant him better access, and his tongue flickers against the hollow of her throat.

"John," she rumbles, needy and guttural, and the soporific heat pooled at the base of his spine spreads to his cock and lower belly.

 _Is this all for me?_ he marvels as he teases eager, sensitive flesh between his teeth and she writhes and arches beneath him. _Am I really that beautiful to her?_

"Help me get out of these clothes? she asks timidly, and kisses the top of his head.

She doesn't have to ask twice. He rises to his knee and lists precariously above her as his body searches for a leg that isn't there. Her hand shoots out to stabilize him, and he offers her a sheepish grin.

"Sorry. I've never done this...like this before. He's acutely aware of the nothingness below his left thigh.

She squeezes his shoulder. "We'll figure it out. Now help me get naked."

He grins. "Yes, ma'am," he says, and plucks at the buttons of her blouse with fumbling, impatient fingers. He blinks in surprise at the realization that the buttons are actually magnetized snaps. 

"Weird, right?" she says, and turns her head into the pillow to hide her embarrassment.

"I was thinking smart," he answers mildly, and turns her face to his. "Don't you apologize for doing what you have to to live your life," he murmurs, and strokes her cheek with the backs of his fingers. "I'm just surprised I never noticed until now." He pushes her blouse off her slender shoulders and lowers his head to nuzzle the prominent spar of her collarbone.

She closes her eyes and mewls, and the hand on his shoulder descends to his chest. "It's not something I advertise." The ball of her thumb finds his nipple and gives it a lazy caress, and his hips jerk at the welling pleasure.

"Mmm," she says, sly and conspiratorial, and then she raises her head to suck the protuberant nub of his nipple into her mouth.

"Jesus Christ," he squeaks, and his hips buck and grind his swollen prick into her belly. He fights for control. He doesn't want this to end before it even starts, doesn't want her to be sticky and bewildered and unsatisfied, but it feels so good, and it's been so long, and his body is overwhelmed by the sudden glut of affection. "Rhea, I'm-I can't," he pants as her tongue laves senstive flesh.

She releases her greedy latch. "Ssssh," she breathes, and her warm breath against damp flesh is an ecstasy unto itself. "It's all right if you need to let go, honey. I told you, we have all night." Her hands slip down his back to cup his ass, and then she peels his boxer-briefs from his buttocks.

He raises his hips and helps her push them past his thighs, and she presses him to her again. He cries out, stunned and desperate, because they're flesh to flesh, his straining cock flush against her belly. It's so much softer than the rough, chafing flesh of his palm, and he sobs with relief. 

"Oh, honey," she croons, and worms a hand between their bodies to hike her skirt around her asymmetrical hips. "Go on, sweetheart."

He shakes his head. "I want this to be good for you," he insists. His cock leaks precome onto her pale belly.

She curls her arms around him and kisses his chin. "Sweetheart, it's already amazing," she says, and her voice cracks. "If you could see how beautiful you are right now... Jesus, John, just the way you're looking at me..." She cups his cheek in her palm. "Now stop worrying, and love me. I don't care how."

 _Love me._ The request obliterates his crumbling resolve, and he reaches down and yanks her underwear down to just below her thighs. He has the presence of mind to nip and lick her collarbone as he settles himself between them.

 _Don't hurt her,_ he tells himself. _Don't you dare hurt her with this._ He slides his hand between her legs and dips an exploratory finger between her folds. She twitches and bucks and moans, glottal and delirious and so hungry, and she's slick and swollen.

"Please, John," she begs, and tries to rock against his hands, but her underdeveloped muscles are unaccustomed to the movement, and so she can only undulate feebly against his probing finger.

It's all the encouragement he needs, however, and so he withdraws his finger and aligns himself with her. She cries out at the blunt heat of his cock as it nudges against her cunt, and he hisses at the tight, wet heat. He tries to take it slowly, to give her time to adjust, but his body refuses to be denied any longer, and he surges into her sucking warmth.

"Christ," he grunts, and forces himself to still. "You're so tight." he buries his face in the crook of her neck and simply breathes. She's tense, muscles locked in startled spasm, and if he moves now, he'll hurt her badly. "I've got you," he murmurs, and mouths the side of her neck. "If you want me to stop, I will."

"No." It's a choked gasp, and her fingernails dig into his shoulders. "Just give me a minute."

He waits, propped on his elbows. Beneath him, she twitches and shudders and wills herself to relax. She's beautiful, fine-boned and vulnerable and queerly exposed despite the bra that still conceals her breasts from his curious eyes and the underwear still bunched around her jittering thighs. She gazes up at him, dazed and lust-addled, and the unvarnished trust and adoration in her eyes threatens to undo him.

"I've got you," he repeats, and bends his head to kiss a small, circular pucker between her breasts, a scar from the distant recesses of her childhood.

She trembles at the contact, and her fingers uncurl. "I love you, John," she says, thickly, and relaxes around him in wordless invitation.

 _I love you, too. So much,_ he thinks as he sinks further into her with a wavering cry. But he can't say it, not yet. Anna's betrayal is still a fresh, weeping welter against his heart.

He says it the only way he can, with the sinuous thrust of his hips. Her mouth opens in a soundless gape, and she quivers spasmodically beneath him. The erratic flutter of her cunt around his plunging cock wipes all rational thought from his mind, and he drives into her with a mindless, atavistic snap of his hips.

"I'm sorry," he says as he surges into her again and again. "I'm sorry." It's too hard, too fast, hardly the lingering, tender experience he'd wanted for her when he'd carried her in here with the solemn reverence of a bridgegroom, but he's too far gone to stop, and the strident creak of the bedsprings only inflames him further, a song of union that he has missed in these long, lonely years of one-handed satisfaction.

She moans with every thrust, but there's no throaty urgency of a hunger satisfied. The angle is wrong, and he knows he didn't take enough time to prepare her for this onslaught. He's not hurting her--not that he can tell through the muddle of his rapidly-approaching climax--but he's not getting her off, either. He whines low in his throat as his hips pump of their own accord and reaches for her hand to entangle their fingers.

 _I'm sorry. I love you._ "God," he rasps, and kisses her, and it's as soft and gentle as his hips can't be. Then he's coming, hard and merciless, a coiling, peristaltic wave that cramps his toes and curls his fingers into a fist atop the bedsheets and drives the breath from him in a ragged, atonal groan that goes on and on and vibrates against her lips and teeth. The pleasure crests and ebbs, crests and ebbs, and his hips shudder and jerk and drive him ruthlessly into her pliant body.

"I'm sorry," he croaks when his climax finally releases its hold. "I'm so sorry." He rolls off of her and onto his side.

"Nothing to be sorry for," she says sedately.

 _Like hell there isn't. I don't even think you got close._ "I don't think you got much out of it."

She shrugs. "That one wasn't about me."

"What? You're saying it was a gimme?" The possibility wounds him more than he cares to admit. He'll be damned if he'll be anybody's pity fuck.

She turns her head, surprised by the bitter hurt in his voice. "You know me better than that," she says, ice and iron, but then her face softens, and she squeezes his hand. "I don't do pity fucks, John. If I did, I'd probably get laid a lot more often. "I did it because I love you, and because I wanted to see what you look like when you let go. And I had an ulterior motive."

"Oh?" He raises an eyebrow.

"I figured if you took the edge off, we could take things slower the second time around. You do still want...to see me, don't you?"

The cautious hope makes his chest ache. He looks at her as she lies beside him, rumpled and half-undressed, with her panties around her thighs and far too much of her flesh left unexplored. "Hell, yes." He presses a lingering kiss to her shoulder and sits up, back pressed to the headboard. "Touch the lamp? Just once."

She blinks at the unexpected request, but complies, and the deepening gloam is illuminated by a diffuse glow, candelight and burnished gold. 

"Perfect," he declares and reaches for her.

He finishes removing her blouse, which has tangled around her forearm, and settles her between his thighs, her slender back pressed against his broad chest. She sighs at the solid warm and relaxes into his embrace, and he grins into her hair.

"All right?"

"Mmm," she hums.

"Good." He caresses her shoulders and slips his fingers beneath her bra straps to rub the pale, thin flesh. No hurry now, just a chance to soothe and explore. He lets his fingers roam from shoulder to crook of elbow and back again and mouths her temple and the line of her jaw, and when her breathing quickens, he reaches up to cup her breast through the fabric of her bra.

"Your turn," he murmurs, and nuzzles the delicate flesh behind her ear.

He skims his palm over the fabric and hums in approval when her nipple stiffens. He scrapes the shell of her ear with his teeth and flicks his tongue out to soothe the prickling burn. She gasps and arches, and he tweaks her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

"Oh," she says breathlessly, and squirms.

He grins into her hair. "You like that?" He pinches it again. It's a hard, pert nub, and he rolls it beneath the gun-callused pads of his fingertips.

"Yes," she admits, and lets her head loll against his shoulder. "God, yes."

He slides his other hand around to cup the other breast and tease the protuberant nipple. She pants and wriggles, and the swell of her ass grazes his flaccid cock. The obvious need and pleasure in her breathy little cries please him, and he reaches between her breasts to unsnap her bra. He pushes the straps off her shoulders and eases them past her elbows and off her wrists, and when she's bared to him, he resumes his eager attentions.

"So fucking gorgeous," he murmurs. He pinches and rolls the nipples into knurled peaks and revels in the reedy groans and warbling, avian chirrups his every touch coaxes from her rosy, parted lips, and in the uncoordinated, insistent grind of her ass against his cock, a delicious, intermittent friction that sparks a nascent desire in his belly.

_You never thought you could make a woman feel like this again. Hell, you weren't sure you wanted to. When you woke up, all you wanted was Anna, her touch, her smell, her reassuring smile as she fed ice chips into a mouth dry and cracked as the Sahara and coaxed you through learning to feed and dress yourself again. You spent seven months waiting and wishing for a fairy tale that had never existed and was never coming back and spilling your bewilderment and loneliness into your fist and mopping up the aftermath with a wad of crumpled Kleenex. By the time you got the truth through your thick, lovelorn skull, you were paralyzed and humiliated by the realization that in all the times she'd had you in your bed, had wrapped her heels around your flexing ass and urged you to go harder and faster, baby, had smiled down at you while she rode your worshipful cock, she had never loved you, had only seen it as a means to an end. She had milked you for intel and left you high and dry._

_You never though you could be so profoundly and catastrophically wrong about someone. You had always prided yourself on your ability to read people, but you had been so blind. It terrified and shamed you, so when the time came to get back out there and establish what Dr. Wentzler called meaningful and intimate connections, you balked. Connection was dangerous, and as much as you craved intimacy, it was a risk you couldn't take, a sweet poison you refused to swallow. So you learned to live with the gnawing, yawning emptiness and soldiered on as best you could._

_In a way, you were grateful to Dorian for that stupid dating profile he set up. It gave you the chance to meet people but keep them at arm's length. A cup of coffee, a light dinner, a little meaningless patter on safe topics, topics that had nothing to do with your job or your scars or who you truly were, and all it cost you was a few bitcoins and time you would've spent watching the walls close in. Just enough contact to ease the vicious ache in the center of your chest, but not enough to threaten the fortress you'd built for yourself._

_You thought about trying for something with Stahl. She was smart and beautiful and understood what it meant to be a cop, and thanks to her prenatal genetic modification, you'd never have to worry about her being ravaged by cancer or senility and leaving you behind a memory at a time. But you could never quite work up the courage. She was too perfect, and you were too broken and jagged at the edges, and you were afraid of what she might see when you took off your clothes, what she would think when she saw the the scars and the stump cap affixed to the truncated end of your leg like protruding bone. How could she want you when you repulsed yourself every time you looked in the mirror._

_By the time you worked up the nerve to mumble a half-assed invitation for drinks at Leo's, it was too late. She'd set her sights on a fellow Chrome, someone young and ambitious and unscarred by failures. Someone who would seldom fail. So you smiled around embarrassment she pretended not to see, and after she'd swanned off with her made-to-order hunk, you sat at your desk and stared at unfinished reports until the stationhouse cleared of everyone but synthetics and the burning faded from your cheeks._

_And then there was Rhea, always there, always steady despite her wobbling legs. Rhea, with her wheelchairs and her forearm crutches and the AFOs she wears less often than she should. She'd been there since the beginning, when you'd hopped to her door in the grips of phantom pains so bad you could hardly speak and clung to the doorframe like a drunk, sweat pouring down your face and a scream locked behind clenched teeth. She didn't hesitate to let you in, a stranger with agony on his face and etched into his bones, and she quietly made a place for you in her quiet, well-ordered world._

_She never batted an eyelash at your stump or pitied you for needing help. She simply offered you the use of her couch and then her tidy guest room and loaned you a cane or crutch so you could charge your leg in your apartment while you bedded down at hers. She introduced you to the joys of a shower bench so you could wash your foot without cracking your skull, and when your visits and overnights became more frequent, she stocked the bathroom with extra towels and your preferred body washes and shampoos._

_And bless her soul, she never asked questions you didn't have the strength to answer, never poked curious fingers into badly-healed wounds. Once you made it clear she had no right to the story of your lost leg, she never asked again, nor did she ask about the scar on your shoulder. She asked about your tattoos and your favorite shows and books and what kind of food floated your gastronomic boat. She asked about your day and your work, but she never pried when you shook your head and changed the subject, and you never caught her snooping through your wallet or nosing through your com. She never invented reasons to knock on your door and insinuate herself into your solitary sanctuary. To this day, you've never invited her inside, and she's never said mum about it._

_You did tell her the tale of John Kennex and His Misplaced Trust eventually, slumped on her couch and raw with the realization of the depth of Anna's betrayal._

It was Anna, _you said dully, fingers clenched around a com that was still in your pocket._

What was Anna? she said blankly. She knew nothing of her, of the raid that had cost your leg and eleven innocent lives.

She was the mole, the leak that compromised the raid, _you explained without explaining anything._

 _Her brow furrowed, and she closed her book and set it on the overstuffed arm of the chair in which she was sitting._ Okay, _she said slowly, and leaned forward to snag the footrest of her wheelchair and pull it closer. Once it was arranged to her satisfaction, she levered herself out of one chair and hoisted herself into the other. Then she released the brakes and rolled to where you sat._

Anna was my girlfriend, _you said._ I loved her. God, I thought I was going to marry her. I spent seven months after my coma waiting for her to come back. _You laughed bitterly and shook your head._ I still thought I was going to get my happily ever after. _You snorted._ Turns out she was working for the crime syndicate I was trying to bust. She's the one who blew off my leg and tossed the pulse grenade meant to finish me off. All this time, I- Christ. _It was a brittle squawk, perilously close to a sob._

_Rhea didn't say a word. She just backed up, set her brakes, swung out her footplates, and transferred to the couch with queer, crabbed efficiency. Then she covered your hand with hers._

I'm sorry, John, _she said, and that was all she said. She turned her head and pressed a chaste kiss to your temple, and then she sat and held your hand. Her thumb stroked the back of your hand, and her head rested on your shoulder, and you sat and let her take care of you because you lacked the strength to get up. You leaned on her because she had proven time and time again that she could take it, and you squeezed her hand so tightly that the color bled from her fingers. She sat there for nearly an hour before she got up, and when she came back, she handed you the bottle of scotch and sat nearby while you drank yourself stupid. Probably not the wisest she could've done, but the kindest, and when the booze had done its merciful work and left you comfortably numb, she let you use the push handles of her chair as a walker to stagger into your room. You woke up the next morning to the mother of all hangovers and a pair of aspirin and a glass of water on the bedside table, and you nearly took a header over the crutch that had fallen to the floor while you slept it off. You downed the aspirin and took a piss and hobbled into the living room to find that she had rigged one of her wheelchair chargers to charge your leg so you wouldn't be utterly helpless while you defended the city on one good leg. You also found three missed messages from Dorian on your com, a cup of hot, black coffee on the counter, and Dorian lingering fretfully outside your apartment door. Maldonado might've chewed your ass for being late if she hadn't needed you to work a double in Chinatown, and by the time you got off shift only two hours late, the worst of the hangover had passed._

_You should have pursued her then, but you were still licking your wounds and mired in the ugly, complicated business of untangling the mess in your head, and a small, unflattering voice at the base of your brain simpered that Rhea wouldn't do, that if you pursued her, people would see it, not as an act of love and honest attraction, but of pity and desperation, the broken settling for the broken. So you ignored the gift the universe had so inexplicably set before you in favor of perfection. Stahl was beautiful and perfect, everything you would never be again, and if you could win her, then maybe there was still a place for you in this world after all._

_It was shameful and shallow and you hated yourself for it. And then came that night with simple Simon and his bomb collar, and it wasn't Stahl you went running to. It was stolid, reliable Rhea, with her welcoming arms and gentle hands. It was her you wanted when the world went to shit, and the realization struck you like a roundhouse slap. It was a subtle seismic shift in your newly-reconstructed world, and all you could do was hold on and wonder just what the hell you were going to do._

_You wanted her so much, to touch and to taste and to see if you could create something lasting and beautiful from the rubble of your life, but you didn't dare rock the boat, not when you'd finally found a place where when you went there, they had to take you in, and where you could feel the warmth of the sun on your face. If you gambled and won, the reward could be beyond your wildest imaginings, but if you were wrong, if you confessed your feelings and bared your fractured soul and she turned from you with pitying eyes and a moue of disgust, you'd be right back where you started, alone and abandoned and longing for someone to draw you out of the shadows._

Now here she is, warm and nubile and wanting in his arms. He'd think he was dreaming if it weren't for the yielding heft of her breasts cupped in his hands and the arrhythmic tap of her ass against his reawakened cock. He sighs in contentment and nips a trail of love bites down the side of her neck. She lurches and keens at each one, and her nipples are stiff peaks in his fingers.

 _You take a bit of pain with your pleasure,_ he muses, and soothes the bites with kisses. 

He releases a breast and drops a hand to the waistband of her skirt. "How do you get this off?"

"There's a magnetic strip in the back," she answers, and pushes her breast into his hand.

He slips his hand behind her and fumbles until he finds a solid ridge among the bunched, rumpled fabric, and then he unbuckles it with a firm, impatient tug. The skirt is so much useless, hindering cotton now, and he removes it with a yank and tosses it over the side of the bed to join his clothes. He's left her with nothing but the underwear bunched above her knees, and he takes a moment to drink in the sight of her, swollen nipples and heaving breasts and the neatly-trimmed thatch of coarse hair at her cunt. Her thighs are slick with arousal and the seed he'd spilled into her, and droplets of the same bead, pearlescent and tacky, in her pubic hair.

It stirs him, primitive and atavistic, and he grunts and thrusts idly against her ass. _Mine,_ he thinks, and his blood races at her hitching breaths and deep, rattling moan. _For tonight at least, she's mine._ He nips the bony point of her shoulder, gaze fixed on the slick, commingled mess between her thighs.

He drops his hands to her sides and spiderwalks his fingers from her ribcage to the top of her hips. She shivers and writhes, but her hands reach back to rest atop his. "Don't."

He freezes. "Don't what? Ticklish?"

She shakes her head. "No. It's... My hips, they're not-"

"Beautiful?" he supplies. "Yes, they are." He draws his thumbs over the sharp spars.

"They're lopsided."

"You do realize you're saying this to a guy who's short a leg?" he points out, and waggles his stump. It's a joke he can only tell her, a vulnerability he would never admit to anyone else.

She laughs softly. "Touche," she murmurs, and cranes to kiss him. He happily obliges and splays his hand over her belly, and his fingertips dip into the thatch of coarse curls. He stretches them and slips two fingers into her warm, wet cleft. She's slick and engorged, hot beneath the pads of his fingers, he gives her distended clit an experimental stroke.

"Unnnhhh." A deep, vibrato groan rises from the center of her chest and dances over his tongue and the backs of his teeth, and her back bows as she rises to deepen the kiss. Her legs twitch and scissor impotently against the restraining snarl of her underpants, and she bucks in an effort to rock against his finger.

"Easy," he rumbles, and slips an arm around her belly to tuck her more snugly against him.

"Please, John, please," she whines, and claws at the sheets.

"Ssssshhhh. I've got you. I'm going to take such good care of you," he promises, and repeats the seductive caress of his finger.

She sings with every stroke of his finger, eyes wide and mouth slack and hips jerking against the possessive coil of his arm around her. "Oh, God, John." Jesus _fuck_!" It's gorgeous, a glorious, unrepentant hosanna, and he savors it as she gabbles and writhes, head thrown back and breasts upthrust. His mouth cramps and waters with the urge to suckle her.

"Don't stop," she begs, and those lopsided hips stutter against his fingers as they rise and fall and move in torturous circles against her sensitive flesh. She's so hot and slick, and each stroke only inspires more viscous wetness.

"I won't, Rhea," he assures her, and indeed, he increases the pressure and friction. He's intoxicated by the heat of her against the sheltering lee of his body and the unalloyed pleasures in her cries and in the erratic, convulsive undulation of her body.

"Oh, God, please! Please!" she wails, and her legs judder and contort with the need to splay, a need thwarted by the inconvenient tangle of her panties. "Please, sweetheart, I need to come." She's sobbing now, and he can see the frenzied flutter of her pulse in the side of her neck.

"Then come," he growls, and increases the pressure and tempo of his dipping, stirring fingers. He's hard as granite again, and he wants to see her come undone at his hand before he lies her down and sinks himself hip-deep into that wet, sucking heat.

He taps her clit and pinches it between his thumb and forefinger, and Rhea howls. Her back arches at an angle he would've thought impossible, and her thighs bunch and splay despite her underwear, which pulls taut with an ominous purr at the seams. Her knees draw up, and her hips snap and pivot against his bracing arm. 

"Yes, John, yes, my sweetheart. Yes, yes, yes," she chants, and wetness floods his fingers with every spasming clench of her cunt.

"Jesus Christ," he croaks, awestruck by the force, ferocity and duration of her climax. Anna's had been muted and dainty, almost chaste despite the lascivious churn of her hips.

 _Bet you can guess why now,_ sneers a cynical, wounded voice inside his head, and he pushes it away. Anna has no place here, and he won't let her taint this.

She finally sags against him, boneless and spent, and she shivers when his fingers continue their stimulation, lazier now, but no less intent. "Fuck," she hisses. 

"You need me to stop?" He laps sweat from her skin.

She shakes her head. "You don't have to stop, but I want to see you."

"All right. Give me a second." He withdraws his fingers. They're slick and pruned, and he wipes them on the sheets. 

"Nice," she says as he eases himself from behind her and lowers her onto the pillows.

"I think we're past tidiness now, don't you?" He settles himself on the bed beside her and presses his cock against the convenient spar of her hip.

She laughs. "You're insatiable."

"You complaining?" He quirks his eyebrow at her.

"Are you kidding?" She laughs again and reaches for him. She pulls him down into a soft, open-mouthed kiss. Her lips are ripe and yielding, and her breath is warm and humid in his mouth. Arms curl around him in a loose-limbed embrace, and he arches into her touch. No gloves, no dry dustiness of talcum powder. Just skin, alive and supple and damp with sweat.

She breaks the kiss and nips his bottom lip. "You taste as good as you look."

"'S that right?" He brushes his fingertips over her hip and delights in the flutter of her eyelashes.

"Almost," she amends, and pulls him in for another unhurried kiss.

He savors every breath that passes between them and exults in the lightning and fog that dance along his skin wherever it touches her. He grins against her lips and presses his torso to hers and frots dreamily against her hip.

She draws her fingers over his shoulder and down his bicep, and then she raises her head to mouth the wattled, thick flesh of his scar. None save doctors have ever touched it, and the flare of arousal startles him. Her eyes gleam with devilish triumph, and she repeats the act with unrepentant relish.

 _Thank you,_ he thinks as her mouth does its patient work and nerve endings long dormant spring into sudden feverish life. His jaw twitches as he watches her. Concentration has sharpened her beauty, and her face glows in the dim, orange flame of the touch lamp. Her tongue teases the ruined, ridged flesh, and though the sensation is blunted in the scar tissue of his shoulder, it's bright and clean and pure between his legs, and his cock jumps. She chuckles, low and dirty as a speakeasy whore, and he groans as precome beads on the head of his prick.

"You want to touch me? Go ahead," she invites him. "But take my underwear off. I think it's shot anyway."

He shifts off of her and rolls onto his side, and then he reaches down and bunches her panties in his fist. He tries to pull them down, but they catch and tangle around her spindly ankles, and after a few fruitless attempts to extricate her feet from the tenacious conglomeration of cotton and elastic, he simply pulls them back up to her knees and tears them off with the discreet purr of failing seams.

"Sorry," he says.

"I'm not," she says.

"Yeah, I guess I'm not, either," he admits, and tosses it aside. "Can I...adjust you a little?" he asks delicately.

She nods. "I'll tell you if it hurts."

"Good." He strokes her thigh with assiduous fingers to relax her, and then he gingerly eases it outward. He keeps going until she tenses, and when he's sure it won't provoke a yelp of pain, he slides his hand behind her knee and coaxes it upward until he feels the first hint of resistance. "Not hurting you, am I?"

"No, sweetheart. Trust me, you'd know it if you were. CP spasms are as subtle as a mule dick on a duck."

He sputters at the image that inspires, and then he sets about arranging her other leg into the same position. When he's finished, he surveys his handiwork with a surge of libidinous pride. She's spread before him, knees up and outturned and alabaster thighs parted to expose her cunt. It's still slick from his earlier attentions, and his cock twitches in anticipation.

"You like what you see?" she asks doubtfully.

"You have no idea," he answers. Her thigh ripples beneath the skin, and her cunt suffuses with blood. "You're a fucking goddess, and if nobody's ever told you that, then fuck them," he says.

"Jesus, John." It's strangled, and when he looks up, there are tears on her face.

"Sssh," he soothes, and slips between her thighs to settle over her, but he makes no move to enter her. Instead, he cradles her face in his hands and rests his forehead against hers. "You're beautiful, do you hear me?" he murmurs, and kisses her tears away.

Her hands encircle his wrists. "Looking at you, I'd say you believe it," she says in watery disbelief.

"And who told you you weren't?" he demands. "Some sneering, limp-dick desk jockey who devoted more time to his three-o'clock highball than to getting you wet before he got off? Some peckerhead with an overinflated ego who thought the world revolved around the bullshit that spewed out of his mouth? Some two-minute man who couldn't keep it up and blamed you for it?"

She gazes at him in astonishment, her tears momentarily forgotten in the wake of his unexpected tirade. "No one ever said I wasn't. They just never said I was."

"Well, that's their blindness, not your problem. Because you are. If you don't believe my mouth, then believe this," he says, and nudges against her with his cock of blood and iron. When she gasps and rises clumsily toward it, he retreats and says, "This is for you. Because of you. All of it. Yeah, it's been a long time for me, and I've spent a lot of nights alone with the Jergens, but it's not like I haven't had chances."

"Stahl?" she offers.

"Fuck Stahl," he snarls. "I could've tried with one of the women from the dating site Dorian set me up on, or with some woman at McQuaid's looking for a charity case. Hell, I could've gone looking for a sexbot. But I didn't because they weren't what I was looking for, what I wanted. They couldn't light the fire that doesn't go out once the fucking stops."

"And I do?" she asks dubiously.

"Yes. You do." He lunges and captures her mouth in a bruising kiss. 

She squawks into his mouth, and palsied fingers scrabble blindly at his back. He gropes for one thin wrist and pulls her arm down to entwine their fingers atop the covers.

"But why?" she asks when he breaks the kiss for want of air.

"Because you're amazing," he says simply, and trails his lips down her chin to the hollow of her throat. He raises his head to meet her gaze. "These hands-" He lifts her hand and strokes the dainty knuckles with the callused ball of his thumb. "-held onto my pieces for me until I could get myself together, and these arms kept me from getting so lost inside my own head that I couldn't come back. So what if your hips are lopsided or you've got a couple scars. So do I. And you stayed and waded in to pull me out when the shit got too thick."

"That's what friends do."

"Maybe," he agrees, and his free hand drifts down to cup her breast. "But I don't think I want to be just friends anymore."

Her eyes widen, and they're so close that he can feel her heart triphammering inside her chest. She swallows with an audible click. "Then love me, John. Please."

He avails himself of another kiss, and when she's relaxed and pliant beneath him, he slips his hand between their bodies and begins to stroke slick, warm flesh. Her hips cant to meet him, and he grins against her breastbone and slides a finger into her. "Just let go. Let me take care of you," he murmurs into sweat-stippled skin as she clenches around him. "Does it hurt?" He pauses.

"No. God, no." She groans and tries to pull his finger deeper into herself. "It feels so good." She rocks and wriggles against his his finger, and he obliges and eases it further into her. She keens, and her pale, slick thighs tremble. "I just don't know what to do with it."

He huffs warm breath against her sternum. "You enjoy it. I'm not going to hurt you, Rhea. I never would." His tongue darts out to savor the salt of her skin. "You say you love me."

"I do. So much." Taut muscles suck greedily at his intruding finger, and he withdraws it only to plunge it into her again. 

"Then let me love you. Trust me. Let me see you."

She says nothing. Her answer comes in the sudden slackness of her body. His finger sinks even deeper into her, and her subsequent moan stirs his blood and makes his restless cock twitch. It's guttural and resonant, pulled from her very bones. It's the sound of surrender. Another thrust of his finger and she whines and ruts, legs splayed.

"John..." It's benediction and invocation and narcotized bliss, and when he looks up, her eyes are closed and her head lolls against the pillow. It's the blind, naked trust for which he so impudently asked, and only his desire to feel her come undone around his pistoning cock stops him from coming on the spot. Instead, he grunts and slips a second finger into her, and when he's sure the cry he coaxes from her is ecstasy rather than agony, he sets a slow and steady rhythm.

He loses time after that, lost in her pleasure as she writhes and bucks and throws back her head and sings to him with the voice that has led him from a thousand nightmares. He's never seen anything like it, nor heard anything so erotic, and his mouth goes dry and his hips churn absently against the mattress. He leans down to moisten his tongue with the sweet ripeness of a nipple, and when his tongue swirls around the swollen nub, she moans with wanton abandon and tightens around his industrious fingers.

"Fuck, John!" she gasps, brittle and reedy, and her hand cups the back of his head. "Ohhhhhh." The moan rolls through her like an ague, and her fingers fist in his hair. She doesn't tug, thank God for small favors. She merely holds him against her nipple, which swells against his laving tongue.

 _She likes having her nipples teased,_ he muses, and files that knowledge away for future reference. Another idle lick, and her hips buck against the rhythm of his fingers. 

"Please, honey. I need to come," she pants. "Oh, God, you feel so good." She molds as much of herself against him as she can. He removes his fingers and is rewarded with a bewildered cry. "No, don't-"

Her protest is cut short when he pushes inside her. Even with the previous climax and subsequent stimulation, it's snug, a velvet glove one size too small, and he shudders and moans at the slick friction of her as she envelops him.

"Jesus God, Rhea," he manages, propped on his elbows and trying not to batter her before she has time to adjust.

She settles her hands on his ass and urges him forward. "Pull my legs up," she says.

He reaches down and pulls up her legs until she can hook her heels around his ass, and then he begins to thrust. She smiles at the simmering stretch of his cock between her legs, and then she relaxes to allow him greater access. He's not sure which is more arousing, the sucking tightness of her cunt or the unabashed pleasure that washes over her face with every snap of his hips. Or maybe it's the noises she makes as he rides her--the moans and throaty gasps, the exultant cries and the slap of conjoined flesh. Maybe it's the creak of the bedsprings or the hypnotic sway of her breasts in tandem with his hips.

His mouth finds her nipple again, and she arches and grunts and tightens around him, and he knows she's close. In truth, he's not far behind. His cock would gladly go on for the rest of the night, but the urgent heaviness in his balls speaks of impending climax, and his arms burn with the effort of holding himself off of her.

"Come on," he urges, determined that she finish before him. "Come on, Rhea, let me see you." 

"Just...suck...fuck." Her heels dig into his ass, and he suspects there will be bruises in the morning. The thought pleases him.

He increases his tempo and sucks her nipple into his mouth, and Rhea shatters with a guttural roar. He's so startled by the intensity of it that he can only stare at her face as she howls and sobs, and the helpless adoration in her eyes unmans him.

 _Not adoration,_ whispers the voice of truth. _It's love, and nothing but, unshakeable and undeniable._

And in that moment, as she sobs and shudders and her cunt spasms around him, he knows he's lost. He's hers if she'll have him, but he still can't say it, not with the memory of Anna's treachery and its incalculable cost still shifting beneath his skin like flecks of bone and shrapnel. So he curls around her, a stallion in full rut, and says what he can. "Mine," he growls, and sucks the flesh of her neck between his teeth. "Mine, Rhea."

And she is his, for as long as she wants to be. There is nothing he would not give her, nothing he would not do to keep her safe. There is so little kindness in this hard, cynical world that takes such bitter delight in scarring those who move through it, and he's determined to protect this fragile scrap that fate has placed in his undeserving hands.

She mewls at his rough-tongued pledge sealed with every jerk of his hips. His balls ache with the need for release, and he pulls her legs even higher and buries his face in her neck. "Please. Please," he breathes into the sweat and kiln-heat of her neck. He doesn't even know what he's asking for, but her hands encircle him as they've always done, and she turns to kiss his sweat-matted hair.

He raises his head from the crook of her neck and cups her cheek. "Look at me," he pants as his body slips beyond his control. "I want-I need you to see me." He needs her to see, to understand what his lips can't yet confess.

She smiles and presses her lips to his, and then he's gone, lost in the frenzy of climax. His hips snap and seize, and his throat works around a stuttering bellow. His toes and fingers curl, and through the haze of euphoria, he sees the blue of her eyes. True to her word, she's watching him, studying his face with sleepy fondness, and the knowledge prolongs his ecstasy and wrings a few more drops from his twitching cock.

He slumps over her, spent and slack and logy with satisfaction. Sweat pools at the base of his spine and drips into the crack of his ass, and the air reeks of them, the salty tang of sweat and the thick, coppery aroma of seed and conjoined bodies, warm skin and ragged breaths and blood drawn in thin, ragged weals by nails harrowed through feverish skin. It's heady and debauched and cloying as incense, and he draws deeply of it because it's life, vibrant and unapologetic and as verdant as Eden's soil.

Rhea shifts under him, and her thighs tremble with small, unpredictable aftershocks. He nuzzles her temple and slips from her, careful not to jostle her legs. "All right?" he slurs with a tongue too heavy inside his mouth.

"'M good," she says, and winces as she closes her legs.

"Did I hurt you?" He peers between her legs for evidence of injury, of love too roughly offered, but there is only the sheen of sweat and arousal and the tacky, piquant whiteness of drying seed.

She snorts and reaches up to brush strands of hair from his temple. "I'm just not used to holding that position with weight behind it." Her legs judder in inelegant agreement, and he strokes one from thigh to knee with a solicitous hand until it stills.

He lies down beside her, boneless and sated, and an arm snakes out to drape over his belly. It's decidedly timid after the urgency between them, and he eyes her in speculative silence for a moment. "Hey, why so tentative?"

She shrugs, face hidden by the pillow and the fall of her tousled, sweat-damp hair. "Some guys aren't big on cuddling in the afterglow," she mumbles.

_And who told you you weren't? Some sneering, limp-dick desk jockey who devoted more time to his three-o'clock highball than to getting you wet before he got off?_

He tucks her more firmly against him. "You're allowed to hold me anytime you want," he says, and rolls onto his side to better entangle their bodies. His ego tempts him to take her a third time, but he knows she's too tired. It's in the glassiness of her eyes and the leaden torpor of her limbs as she struggles to get closer. So he plies her with open-mouthed kisses and touches designed to calm and invites her to do the same. 

"Let's get you to the shower," he says when her legs have stopped twitching and all tension has bled from her body. In truth, he has no desire to get up, but the sheets are a wet, stick ruin, and he doesn't want her getting an infection.

"Mmmm," she groans, and burrows into him. She's nearly asleep.

"I know. Me neither. But you'll thank me later. Besides, I could use some noodles."

That earns him a muffled laugh. "Of course you could. Bottomless pit."

"A working cop," he retorts with rumpled dignity, and swings his leg over the side of the bed. "Who just worked up an incredible appetite." He reaches for his leg, which lies on the floor like so much deadfall.

"Is that your way of paying me a compliment, Kennex?" Amused and more alert, and he hears her stir behind him.

He picks up his leg and slides it into place with a twist of his wrist and the click of engaging couplings. "Hang on. I'm going to carry you in. If you sit in your chair, you're going to make an unholy mess." He stands up and gives his prosthesis an experimental jog.

"Is that another compliment I hear?"

He turns and holds out his arms, and she scrabbles to the edge of the bed and does the same. He slides one arm under her knees and the other around her shoulders and lifts from the knees, and she curls her arms around his neck and rests her head on his shoulder. Slow and easy, as though they've done it a hundred times before.

 _I love you,_ he thinks as he carries her into the bathroom, but all he says is, "You should take it as one."

She titters. "Why? Because my spastic joybox coaxed forth the motherlode?"

"Because you made me feel safe enough to let go," he says quietly, and she stills and falls silent.

He steps into the roll-in shower and sets her on the bench seat, and then removes his leg again and stuffs it into the waterproof medbag hanging from a hook beside the towel rack. It takes some fiddling and amiable shuffling and a bit of squabbling over the proper temperature for a post-coital shower, but they end up side by side on the bench. He washes her with persnickety care from temple to point of toe, and with every touch, his hands say what his mouth cannot. 

She returns the favor, and as he kneels in the shower with her hands in his hair and the water a hot, cleansing torrent at his back, he closes his eyes and lets peace wash over him. Her hands pause in their gentle work, and soft lips kiss his forehead and tarry there, and for a moment, before they retreat and her hands resume their thorough, sudsy toil, the words he cannot say linger on the steamy air like a promise.


End file.
